At the Associated Student Government meeting last Thursday, the ESU Student Foundation became an official Recognized Student Organization. Its bill was passed with 11 affirmative, zero negative and one abstaining vote.
Jessica Rice, senior psychology major, who is the originator of the bill and one of the organization’s charter members, spoke on the organization’s behalf.
“We are a philanthropy-type organization,” she said. “We want students to give back to the university while they’re still students. As students, you receive private gifts (like scholarships). Giving back as a student can help patch that forward.”
Rice arrived at the meeting wearing a T-shirt that bore the words “Hornet Nation,” which represents another part of the group.
“Hornet Nation is the Student Foundation’s annual fund,” Rice said. “The fund will go to giving class gifts again, and we’d like to start giving scholarships.”
Class gifts, she said, would be given every May.
“Right now we have 14 members that are on the Student Foundation,” said Tyler Huddleston, charter member and freshman elementary education major, “but we have 150 members of Hornet Nation.”
He said that in terms of class gifts, their main focus right now are physical things that would improve the look of campus.
“(Class gifts are) anything that we can do to make campus more beautiful,” Huddleston said. “Right now, we’re focusing on a couple benches outside of some of the buildings from the class of 2013.”
Cleaning out Wooster Lake is another project they look forward to working on, Rice said.
“But that’s going to be really expensive, and we definitely don’t have the money for that this year,” she said. “So that’s one thing that we would like to look at doing as a future class gift.”
The idea of cleaning out Wooster Lake was especially exciting to senator Jennifer Clark, senior accounting major.
“It might happen after I’m gone, but I’d love to come back and do some canoe races in clean water,” Clark said.
In general, Clark said she is glad to see the group become an RSO.
“I am really excited for that to get passed,” Clark said. “For students to take the initiative and start building a fund and a foundation to help the university is great.”
Any size of donation will be accepted, Rice said, but a certain amount will get the donator a special Hornet Nation T-shirt.
“You make a gift to the Annual Fund of $18.63 to celebrate our founding year, and then you get a T-shirt,” Huddleston said. “Every year, there’s going to be a new T-shirt for students to purchase.”
Along with the ESU Student Foundation, the East Asian Club and the Saudi’s Club of ESU became RSOs, while the rest of the evening was devoted to fiscal affairs.
The next meeting will be at 5 p.m. April 11 in the Memorial Union Senate Chamber.
